


Cold Comfort

by Flywoman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Gen, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-05-04
Updated: 1998-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-12 23:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flywoman/pseuds/Flywoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scully struggles with survivor guilt that first night after the events in "Paper Clip."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: They aren't mine, never were, never will be. Not only that, but I lifted an entire copyrighted scene out of "Paper Clip," one of the best episodes of the third season, no doubt mangling it irretrievably in the process, and another out of "A Christmas Carol." But be generous with your creation, Chris. Recall the old saying about imitation and content  
> yourself with being flattered. Also, I owe the idea for one scene to Debbie Gramlich's story "Sisterly Love," borrowed without permission with apologies to the author.

Washington D.C. General Hospital 7:00 pm

They say that in that still, clear moment in which you hang suspended between your whole history and an approaching death, your life flashes before your eyes. I always wondered what this meant, whether it would be a single blinding illumination, in which I would see the shape and pattern revealed of what I had experienced only as random tangled threads, and cry, "Of course!" or whether, on the contrary, I would be hit with a rapid fire series of vignettes, in which I saw myself growing young again, dwindling down to a curly-haired freckled girl in grubby overalls, and then into a red-faced squalling infant with a smooth head covered in silky down. In the three years in which I have worked with Special Agent Mulder on the X-files, I have faced the possibility of my own death many times, but I have never encountered this phenomenon, this smoke and mirror trick of memory, until now.

I stand just outside the operating room at D.C. General, my ragged breath fogging the smudged glass. Surgeons and nurses spin, reach, thrust, in a frantic and intricate dance, made more eerie by the complete absence of sound. Because of their masks, I cannot even read their lips, but I can imagine what they must be calling to each other as the EKG on the monitor bobbles and dips: Clamp, quickly! Increase oh-two to 100%. All right, people, let's _move!_ And they do: the only person in the room not operating at breakneck speed is my sister Melissa, face still and wilted-lily-pale beneath their flashing instruments. Animated by the ventilator, her chest rises and falls serenely, while I breathe in irregular gasps, my heart fluttering in my throat like a trapped wren. Beside me, our mother watches with eyes the color of despair, gripping my arm so tightly that it has long since gone numb. We have been standing here together for nearly an hour, since my first steps through the ICU double doors were met by a team rushing my older sister up to surgery. There wasn't time for me to so much as touch her cheek, whisper an apology... say goodbye.

"She was doing so much better..." my mother says softly now, glancing at me quickly and then turning back to the glass so that I have no time to respond, to correct her. We both know, I with my medical training and experience and she with some inscrutable maternal instinct, that this is the last time we will ever wait for Melissa in the corridor of a hospital. At least Mom hasn't tried to suggest that I would be of more help to my sister inside that sterile little room, laying hands on her, making good use of my expensive education. She knows that I am a forensic scientist, not a brain surgeon, although I am sure that the thought has crossed her mind more than once despite her intellectual grasp of the situation, of my inadequate skills in these circumstances. I wish that I could offer myself, these willing hands, to Melissa. Instead I settle for clasping my mother's fingers, feeling the smooth ridge of her wedding band dig into my palm, and continue to stare straight ahead at the futile performance in the next room. A sharp buzz begins to swell behind my raw eyes.

This is how it begins: suddenly I am still staring through the glass, but now I stand in a brightly lit emergency room in San Diego, watching my older sister get her stomach pumped on the other side, great gouts of a thick tarry substance erupting into the vacuum trap while my mother presses a handkerchief to her mouth beside me. Missy is sixteen. It's the night of the senior prom, and she is still mostly clad in a crushed burgandy velvet dress stained with liquor and vomit. Her date, Jim Mullen, stutters loudly in a corner of the waiting room, towering over our balding father, trying to apologize, trying to explain. I know that this isn't his fault, not entirely, anyway. Missy confided her plans to me last night, while she was trying on her dress and I was studying for a big AP Biology exam. This was her first big opportunity to explore, to escape the narrow confines of her strict Catholic upbringing and her rigid conscious mind. It will not be her last. I crane my neck and stand on tiptoe in a hopeless attempt to catch a glimpse of Melissa's face. She is so white, so still...

The scene changes, and Missy is still in her velvet dress, now clean and well-worn, but she is sprawled on her rumpled bed in the room we share, crunching an apple over a Carlos Castaneda novel. "How was your date?" she mumbles brightly around a mouthful of fruit without looking up.

It has taken almost all of my strength to push our door open, thin though it is. Now with the last of it I stumble across the room to my own bed, swollen and aching. As I sink onto the mattress I gasp with the sudden dark surge of pain. Missy glances up sharply from her book, then drops it with a muted cry of alarm and fairly leaps to my side. "Dana, what happened?" I hear her voice from a great distance. So cold. I wrap my arms more tightly around my traitorous breasts, clenching my thighs together so hard that my battered pubic bone burns between them. "Dana, did he hurt you?"

I shake my head numbly, force speech between bruised lips. "Missy, help me... I'm so cold." My teeth are clacking painfully against each other. Missy swiftly draws my favorite throw blanket around my shoulders and sits down on the bed next to me, pulling me close. _Panic._

I start to struggle, trying to break away, a whimper building deep in my throat, but Missy is stroking my hair tenderly and murmuring, "Shh, Dana, it's all right, it's Missy, I'm here, you're gonna be okay," and after a few long seconds my heart stops pounding quite so hard and the darkness recedes a little and I lean rigidly against her, grateful for her reassuring warmth...

Abruptly Melissa is gone and my father sinks heavily onto the edge of the bed beside me, running a hand through the thinning red fringe of his hair. "Listen, Starbuck," he begins in a conspiratorial hush, "you've got to talk to your sister for me. Make her realize that she needs to try harder and get her grades up. She's too bright to be dreaming her life away like she does. Lord knows I've tried to talk to her-" he crosses himself absently "-but sometimes I think she'd flunk out just to spite me. And of course your mother's no help at all with these things." I toy with my pencil, crouched over my quantum physics texts, and stare stony-faced without speaking. He tries another tack. "You tell her, she'll listen to you. You know how much she's always admired you."

I go hot and cold with swirling anger, pity, and resentment. But at last I sigh through clenched teeth and nod reluctantly, feeling like a traitor and a charlatan. Mercifully, his next words hang in the air unspoken: "Why can't Melissa be more like you?" And so this time I don't give in to the urge to jump up and shout, _What's so great about me?_ and _Who am I to dictate the shape of her life?_

A sudden muffled clatter in the hall is followed by the bang of the bathroom door. My father raises his head, looking tired. "Missy, is that you?" He heaves himself off the bed and stands framed in the open doorway, leaving me silent and sullen. "Missy?"...

"Missy, you get back up to your room and into some decent clothes this minute!" and Melissa slams the screen door behind her as my father rises from the dinner table, round face red, spluttering with impotent rage. I watch her saunter out to the driveway with a loose, insolent swing to her newly broadened hips, her thighs sleek and pale under fishnet stockings between her tight leather skirt and her spike-heeled black boots.

"It's just her stage costume, Bill," my mother says soothingly, reaching for his hand, and I struggle vainly to suppress a smirk, picturing my father's likely reaction if he ever obtained the slightest glimpse into the actual nature of Missy's latest gig, the weekly screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the dilapidated Rialto downtown.

Now as Missy swings her leg nonchalantly over the seat of her new boyfriend's Harley, that skirt hikes way, way up, past the lacy black garters to the crease below her buttocks, and she turns her strawberry blond head to favor me with an almost pitying grin. And then she is gone, roaring off into the night, leaving me with my parents at the table, wrapped in an awkward silence. Many minutes pass before my father breaks it with a show of joviality, clapping me roughly on the back: "Thank God, Starbuck, we've never had to worry about any of this stuff with you!"...

This scene dissolves completely, leaving me shivering in the dead of winter outside my medical school dorm. It is the week before the long-awaited end of OB-GYN, my least favorite rotation to date, and yet I am dreading the end of it - or more accurately, the beginning of the break to follow. A few nights ago I called my parents and told them that I was thinking about joining the FBI, doing a forensics residency instead of preparing for a career in private practice. My mother received this news tight-lipped; my father sounded livid. I finally hung up in tears, shaken to the core but no less fiercely determined to pursue my new goals. But since then, doubt has crept into the silence. I want more than anything to have my family's understanding and support in this decision, and for what seems like the first time in my life I find I cannot have either.

Now I reach into my mailbox, heart knotting with loneliness, a bitter taste in the back of my throat. There is a single piece of mail, a postcard with a colorful picture of a naked woman, vibrant, glowing, arms raised to the sun. Crammed onto the back in my sister's unmistakable untidy scrawl is a poem:

"Dana, this year has left you dry, taut, brittle, a withered stick at the side of the road. But you too can sprout, and grow, and blossom, Even here, far from sunshine and moist salt breezes, Far from cradling trees and comforting stone. Your father, now so full of rage, Will split a pomegranate to share on your return, the sweet ruby juice running down your chins. You walk torn, confused, spinning, encompassing Rejoice in your potential You have not shipwrecked, Only become stranded on an unexpected island for a time. From here you may sail in any direction.

Love, Missy P.S. See you soon!"

I am smiling, but a tear escapes to spatter onto the postcard, blurring the purple ink. Christmas is just around the corner, and soon I will be home...

I snuggle into the living room couch, wrapped in my worn white terrycloth robe. Missy crosses in front of the warm flickering light from the fireplace. "I couldn't sleep," I confess, as guiltily as though she has caught me sneaking around under the Christmas tree rather than sitting quietly on the sofa.

"How come?" Missy asks, settling herself in the loveseat. "You worried about Quantico or who gets the most presents this year?"

"I guess I'm afraid that I'm making a big mistake. I can tell Dad sure thinks I am."

Missy is trying not to smile. "Oh. Well. It's not his life, Dana."

"I know that," I say impatiently. "But you know, when I started med school, it felt so right... it just seemed like that was where I was supposed to be... and..." I sigh. "And then by the time I graduated I just knew it was wrong. And now the FBI feels right and - what if that's wrong too?"

"There is no right or wrong," Missy replies confidently. "Life is just a path. You follow your heart and it'll take you where you want to go."

I grimace. "You sound like a greeting card." Now Missy smiles, not at all offended. But I continue slowly, "I don't believe in fate. I think we have to choose our own path."

"Well, just don't mistake the path for what's really important in life."

This is a new one. "Which is what?" I counter.

"The people you're gonna meet along the way... You don't know who you're going to meet when you join the FBI. You don't know how your life is going to change... or how you're going to change the lives of others..." Missy suddenly hunkers down next to the coffee table and beckons me over conspiratorially. "Don't be scared, Dana. I have a feeling that this decision is going to transform your life forever. And that you're going to meet someone very special that you never would have known otherwise..."

"That's downright spooky," Bill complains, tossing his pencil down on the coffee table with a grimace of frustration, bordering on disgust. "I vote that next time we put you guys on separate teams."

Beside me, Missy grins triumphantly and tries to catch my eye, but I avoid her by looking instead to our father, who has been watching his three favorite girls with a twinkle in his pale blue eyes. "Bill Jr.'s right," he concurs fondly, reaching with one hand to knead the muscles at the base of Mom's neck. "A couple of hundred years ago, all three of you Scully women would have been burned at the stake."

"Wait just a minute. Don't you mean we _O'Brien_ women?" Mom counters with mock indignation. "Assuming it's running in the maternal line, I mean!" The whole family laughs except for me. I am squirming with embarrassment at the thought of being grouped together with Mom and her uncanny prophetic dreams, and Missy with her bizarre beliefs in auras  
and fortune-telling. I am a scientist, soon to be a doctor, and it disturbs me that I haven't found a satisfactory way of explaining their occasionally astonishing predictions. Not only are Mom and Missy right on target about people and events far more frequently than would be expected from random chance, but they often seem to know things for which even the most sensitive perceptions of their surroundings could not reasonably account. How do they do it?

And how did I know just now that the jagged shape Missy scribbled in blunt lead was supposed to be the "Red Cross"? "Look, Dana," Missy nudges me impatiently, and I start and blink at her in confusion. Somehow, I just knew...

"Look," Missy hisses gleefully, reaching down to roll up the left cuff of her jeans. We are sitting on the porch steps on a warm June day, the cry of seagulls high above us. I stoop obligingly, wondering if her new tattoo is a rainbow, a dove, a heart with an anchor. But what I see is something I never would have expected, yet have to admit makes a certain  
perverse sense coming from my sister: a recycling symbol, a bright red triangle with three swirling green arrows inside it.

"Missy, I hate to say it, but that's oddly appropriate," I tell her with a straight face.

She smiles at me, then becomes suddenly serious. "This body is only a temporary container," she declares gravely. "When I die, I want you guys to donate all of my organs. And I want my body to go to your medical school."

I stare at her for a second in disbelief, then give her a little push. "Don't be ridiculous," I say. "I wouldn't let people like my classmates get their bloodthirsty little hands on me for a million bucks." I pause, an image of the pitiful remains of my own first cadaver flashing in my mind's eye. "Besides," I add, trying to smile, "there's nothing more frustrating to a first year anatomy student than an organ donor!"

"Yeah, yeah," she grins, waving my feeble joke away with one slim hand. "You think I'm a weirdo, admit it..."

"Missy is a weirdo!" the fourth grade class heartthrob jeers for the third time in a maddening sing-song, his eyes alight with malice behind impossibly long eyelashes. He stands on the playground surrounded by a circle of admirers, pointing his elegant little index finger at my sobbing older sister, laughing at her, and at my increasing anger and frustration.

Then "I hate your guts, Chris Valdez!" I explode, and suddenly my fist is connecting with his perfect jaw and shooting trails of bright fire down my sturdy wrist, and now I am screaming obscenities and straddling his supine form, swinging left and right at his alternately reddening and blanching face as he cowers and screams.

Melissa is crying behind me, "Dana, let him go, stop hurting him," and the gravelly asphalt digs painfully into my bare knees, while grubby hands pull at me from all sides.

But I ignore the noise and confusion and keep pounding away at my nemesis until a whistle shrieks two feet from my ear and Sister Soledad's dreaded bellow follows on its heels: "Dana Scully! What is the meaning of this _hooliganism_ from a young lady in the second grade?" An excruciating tug on my left ear plucks me swiftly off my whimpering antagonist, leaving me stranded in front of her, squinting resentfully against the sunlight as the rest of the crowd mysteriously melts away. "That red-headed Scully temper will be the damnation of the lot of you..."

Now I find myself emerging from the sallow fluorescence of the metro at Union Square by NYU. Squinting against the sudden revealing glare, I hesitate, holding my sister back from her eager plunge into the midday crowds. A weathered gap-toothed Black man of indeterminate age and sobriety grins at us and calls over his shoulder as he passes, "Yo, sweetheart! You showin' your lil' sister the city?"

His slightly bloodshot eyes are raking over Missy's tall, willowy slenderness, and I blush hotly, feeling dumpy and baby-faced beside her. But my sister only laughs richly and tugs at my hand in impatience. "C'mon, 'little sister,' I'll be late for my interview..."

Five-year-old Missy skips cheerfully down the driveway clutching her stuffed rabbit, her chubby little hand clinging stickily to mine...

Missy's cool little hands press firmly into the small of my back, and I am propelled ecstatically up towards the heavens, the spring breeze rushing past my flushed face...

Missy and I lie giggling together under elaborate tents of blankets and pillows draped over the living room furniture...

Missy appears at our door on the night of my big O-Chem midterm with a freshly baked cranberry scone and a mug of steaming spiced apple cider for me...

The images succeed each other more and more rapidly until I barely have time to place one scene in space and time before it evaporates into the next. Missy laughing, Missy singing with me in the bathtub, Missy presiding over a solemn tea party with her dolls. Faster and faster, until my head whirls with an incoherent blur of faces, shapes, fragments of color and sound. My heart is pounding wildly; my locked knees threaten to buckle. Ten more seconds of this and I will find myself in a heap on the corridor floor. But then, slowly, a still center appears before me, starting small, but gradually unfolding like a flower until it has smoothed away the chaos, leaving a single distinct vision. This one feels as real, as familiar, as the other memories, but with a startling difference: I, Dana, am not physically present. Yet I can see Missy clearly, seated at a small round table covered with a lacy white tablecloth in her first apartment. I am watching her from above as she chatters into the telephone, the receiver tucked between her neck and shoulder, her head tilted to one side.

"You've been reassigned to work with who? Wait a minute. Isn't he the one you used to say was... spooky?" A pause; Missy's mouth quirks in a small smile. "So why were you selected for this honor?" Another pause as Missy listens intently, presumably to me. I can't clearly recall my side of this conversation, but I remember the occasion for our chat as clearly as if it happened yesterday. I had shown up to teach my class at Quantico exactly as usual that morning, and in my mailbox had been a discreetly unlabeled manila envelope that contained a letter inviting me to a meeting with the Violent Crimes section chief regarding a sudden change of assignment. It had been phrased to sound like an honor, like a belated recognition of the unusual skills and experience I had brought to the FBI as a medical scientist. My concentration had been shot for the rest of the day, I was experiencing such a heady combination of giddiness and anxiety. I had called my sister immediately upon returning home and breathlessly dredged up every scrap of information I could recall about my new assignment and my future partner, the famous- and in some circles, infamous -Fox Mulder.

"Interesting," Missy says now. "Well, I guess if they want scientific anaylsis and skepticism then you're their woman, sis. Uh-huh." Another, longer pause. Missy is starting to frown slightly. "Listen, Dana," she begins at last, "I can tell that you're not really sure about this. If you want, I could just do a little reading for you and- Okay, all right, never mind, forget I mentioned it! But if you don't believe in this stuff anyway then what difference-" The line has apparently gone dead; Missy stares bemusedly at the receiver for a minute and then replaces it in its cradle. Observing, I feel a quick flush of old annoyance and new embarrassment. I had been furious, fed up with my big sister and her New Age nonsense, but that was no excuse. She had only been trying to help.

In contrast, Missy doesn't seem at all flustered by my overreaction. She is, however, clearly bothered by our conversation. She stares into space for a moment, absently tapping her fingernails on the tablecloth, then abruptly pulls a slim deck of oversized cards towards her. She shuffles rapidly, biting her lower lip in concentration, then lays the card out in a careful pattern, six face-up, four face-down. I recognize the colorful images of her favorite tarot cards, already dog-eared from many hours of eager consultation. When she is done, she does not begin the reading immediately, but pulls her ankles up to sit cross-legged in her chair for about half a minute, eyes closed, breathing deeply, face still. At last she blinks softly and turns her solemn gaze to the cards before her.

"Your present influence is The Fool," she observes aloud, lightly touching the first card in the pattern, which features a gaily clad man stepping blithely over the edge of a cliff, his head obviously in the clouds. "You are about to encounter an individual whose naivety, thoughtlessness, irrationality, and extravagance will test your patience and convictions, but whose enthusiasm will carry you along on his journey despite yourself." She smirks a little. "I guess I don't have to think too hard about who _that_ might be."

Next she touches the card that lies crosswise over the first. "The Moon suggests that deception, obscurity, and danger lie just ahead. Beware. Unknown enemies will place obstacles in your path." Missy tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "Well, honestly, it's the FBI, what would you expect."

"This card symbolizes your goal or destiny, or your aim or ideal. It is Justice. You seek a reasonable outcome, a proper balance. From yourself you expect impartiality and careful weighing of the facts to reach a correct conclusion." So far I have been watching her with a grimace of impatience: what help is this series of vague predictions supposed to be? On the other hand, the cards she has put down at random seem oddly... appropriate for their position. But _no,_ I catch myself, _this is ridiculous. It's pure coincidence._

Missy taps the card to the right of The Fool, a stern-looking man seated on a throne. "The emperor is the patriarchal figure in your past foundation. Good old Ahab. Your thoughts and actions have been strongly shaped by your relationships with authority. Isn't that the truth. Also, for you, reason has generally dominated over passion." She smiles with a kind of quiet triumph. "Gosh, Dana, I wish you could see this. You'd never make fun of my readings again." _I can. I wouldn't. Please, Missy, give me that chance. For heaven's sake, Dana, get a hold of yourself._

The card below The Fool shows a disturbing image of destruction, two people falling from a great height. "The Tower portrays great changes in your recent past due to the breakdown of old beliefs. Your decision not to practice as a doctor caused a lot of upheaval in our family, that's for sure. This has also resulted in the loss of stability and security, in your goals and your relationships, leaving you vulnerable to further change. These events set the stage for the choices you now face."

I recognize the card to the left of The Fool without having to read the title: it is Death, riding a pale horse under a black banner that bears a white rose. Missy looks distressed, but not greatly so. I, on the other hand, am beginning to tremble. Memories of my abduction threaten from the dark depths to which I have consigned them. But Missy is speaking, and her gentle voice drowns out those thoughts, those terrifying images. "Death is in all our futures, Dana. I choose to read this card as predicting a transformation, an unexpected change. But it could also mean illness, or a great loss. I won't know until I see the final cards." I wrap these words around myself for comfort. Perhaps that future has already come to pass; perhaps I escaped Death in the hospital in those days after my abrupt return, those days that left me weak, dazed, with no power to recall or articulate what had been done to me.

Missy has finished with the images now visible. She reaches to turn over the bottom card in the line of face-down cards to the right of them. "Your present position and attitude is that of The Hierophant. You are a source of mercy, kindness, inspiration, and compassion. But don't get too much of a swelled head, St. Dana, because you also have a tendency to cling to your beliefs and principles even when they are outdated or no longer valid." Listening, I grow hot with indignation, my fear for the moment forgotten. Who is Missy, with her crystals and tarot cards, to tease me about inappropriate beliefs?

Still grinning, Missy turns over the next card. "To others, you are represented by the High Priestess, who stands for wisdom, objectivity, self-reliance, and emotionlessness. They will rely on your common sense and sound judgment. Fits you to a T, along with the traditional association with platonic rather than passionate relationships!" Very funny, Missy. I am still fuming a bit from that last card.

Now she reveals a maternal-looking figure, sceptre in hand, enthroned amid fields of golden grain. "Interesting," Missy muses. "This card is supposed to indicate your inner emotions, your secret fears or desires. But the Empress is the symbol of motherhood, of fruitfulness, of feminine influence and vitality. Do you secretly wish that you weren't so  
driven by your career ambitions that you've put all thoughts of a family on hold? Or do you fear your intuitive, emotional, feminine side? Probably both, actually, sis." This interpretation both disgusts and intrigues me. On the one hand, it is exactly the kind of feeble pop psychology that so infuriates me when I try to talk to my sister about issues in my life. On the other, I can't deny, however much I might want to, that it might contain some grain of truth. But Missy doesn't leave me much time to ponder these conflicting feelings. Her hand hovers over the last card.

And leaves it. Missy pushes her chair back from the table and stands up. She begins to pace. I have rarely seen her so agitated. What could possibly be wrong? Is she that afraid to view the final outcome of this little game? She must really take this seriously. Ridiculous. It's just a silly card trick, a psych quiz. It means whatever you want it to mean. _Sit down,_ I urge her silently from above. _It doesn't matter. Just finish it._ The incongruity of the dismissal and the request occurs to me even as I phrase them. I wait, confused and anxious. What is wrong with me? I don't believe in any of this. I don't.

As if in response to my vehemence, Missy resumes her seat. Once again she meditates briefly, slowing her breathing, steadying herself. At last she reaches for the final card. Slowly she turns it over. A man hangs upside down, suspended in midair. The room is very still. Missy seems to be holding her breath. I am ready to scream with impatience, forgetting for the moment that this is all nonsense, irrelevant. What does it mean? Missy stares down at the card for a seemingly interminable length of time. Then, just as I feel utterly unable to stand it any longer, she ends her silence, licking dry lips and finding her voice in a fearful whisper that I must strain to hear. "The Hanged Man," she observes bleakly. "Transition, change, reversal of mind and of one's way of life. Or..." and her gaze flickers to Death and back again, and she shudders and abruptly sweeps the cards fluttering to the floor. She has paled and looks exhausted, ill. "Or sacrifice." Missy suddenly sinks to the ground as if stunned. Or shot. The vision blurs brightly. I am staring into a blinding light. Then even that vanishes, and I see only darkness.

I find myself in the hospital corridor again, now weeping harshly, without tears. "Missy," I murmur brokenly, "Missy, I'm so sorry. Missy, why didn't you tell me?" My mother is shaking me.

"Dana, what's wrong? Dana? Can you hear me?" Her anxious eyes bore into mine.

I gulp and shudder and fight to get a grip on myself. This is the last thing my mother needs to see. I am supposed to be the strong one. I am supposed to be...

Behind her, the doors to the operating vestibule swing open. An intern emerges, young face drawn and tired. "Mrs. Scully, Dr. Scully," he says hesitantly. I do not want to listen to him. I do not want to hear him say the words that will make it real.

"I regret to inform you that, although we used all our capabilities and did everything in our power, we were unable to save Melissa..."

***

I am in Melissa's room in the ICU. I do not remember how I got here, but my mother is kissing me on the cheek, her face still wet, and then she is gone, gone on, gone home. My face is still dry. It is very cold in this place. I have never known such silence. Even that year when Missy wandered up and down the West Coast, with only a few sporadic postcards  
flung across country to let us know that she was still alive and well, I never lost my sense of her, tucked into a comforting corner of my mind. Now there is nothing but the hollow echo of guilt. The emptiness is almost unbearable, and somehow I sense it will be worse when I reenter familiar places. So I cannot go home just now. I cannot go home alone. I sink into the only chair to wait for Mulder. He will come for me.

I am still sitting here in this ghastly empty room when Mulder walks in. I know that if I look at him, if I catch a glimpse of compassion in his eyes, I'll lose it. So I stare at a point just below his chin, try to remain professional. "It happened three hours ago. She went into surgery... the damage to her brain was worse than they had hoped." To my dismay, he crouches beside me, a comfort, a warning. "Her blood pressure started to rise and um..." _I regret to inform you that although we used all our capabilities we were unable _"she slipped away."__

Mulder doesn't flinch, but his face tightens. He puts his hand on mine, which are bloodless, numb. Touched, I try to express the one thought that has been washing urgently back and forth through my battered brain ever since: "She died for me... and I tried to tell her I was sorry but I don't think she'll ever really know," and my voice catches despite my resolution.

Mulder does not let this pass unchallenged. "Oh, she knows! Melissa knows."

Somewhere deep down I am grateful for this gesture, but it changes nothing. "You were right," I tell him bleakly. "There is no justice."

"I don't think this is about justice, Scully."

"Then what is it about?" I snap, more sharply than I'd intended.

"I think it's about something we have no personal choice in..." Mulder says slowly. "I think it's about fate." I glance at him; I feel my lips tighten around a protest but say nothing. He swallows, changes the subject. "Skinner told me that he talked to you... that you were insistent about coming back to work. Now if Melissa's death is-"

But I am already shaking my head, cutting him off. My voice emerges low and vehement, almost a snarl, "I need something to put my back up against."

"I feel the same way," Mulder says softly, close to stuttering, close to tears. "We've both lost so much..." I gulp down my own incipient sob. "But I believe that what we're looking for is in the X-files - I'm more certain than ever that the truth is in there." His eyes, brimming with tears just a second ago, shine with renewed conviction.

I feel sick. I burn coldly with an anger that goes beyond anger, a demand for meaning that will not be denied, that will fuel me in the bitter years ahead. "I've heard the truth, Mulder," I retort, remorselessly quenching his hopeful fervor. "Now what I want are the answers."

He has nothing to say to this. Nothing to say, and so he rises to his knees, slides one arm around my shoulders, pulls my head towards him with the other. I am pressed tightly against his side. I feel that his warmth, his fragrance lack the power to penetrate me. Nevertheless, I bury my face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. He rubs my arm, roughly, as if trying to revive a frostbite victim. An apt analogy. I feel something taut and icy in my center snap, prickle, begin to thaw. Tears well up as if from some melting subterranean spring,  
and I start to cry.

***

Mulder is helping me into his car. I sink into the musty-smelling upholstery, feeling drained, a dessicated husk around an achingly barren core. The car door slams. Mulder folds himself into the driver's seat and buckles himself in. I have not stirred. He opens his mouth to say something, changes his mind, unbuckles himself and reaches awkwardly across me.  
I make no move to assist him. He pulls the seatbelt down over my breasts and snaps it into place. I continue to stare straight ahead without blinking. The Baltimore night passes by me in a moist blur.

In my apartment, I stand motionless by the front door, noting the innumerable subtle signs that someone has been in here, probably several someones, leaving the objects on my coffee table unnaturally arranged, the wooden floor a little too clean around a shadow that proves to be a stain. I am at a loss to continue, thinking, It happened right here and then, absurdly, How will I ever get the blood out of the floorboards? Mulder rummages in the kitchen for a minute and reemerges with two shot glasses of whiskey, neat. He hands one to me, and I down it obediently, feeling no pleasure at its slow burn down my esophagus. Mulder is saying something. He touches me on the arm. I assume that he has asked if I am all right, and nod at him, I'm fine. He takes my empty glass from me and propels me gently towards the hallway with a hand in the small of my back.

I wander listlessly into the bedroom. There is a faint, familiar flicker from the living room. Odd that I can't hear the tv. I strip down steadily, automatically, not bothering to close the door. He has already seen me naked tonight. My wellworn pajamas are folded neatly at the foot of the bed, and I watch indifferently as my hands reach for them, newly roughened fingertips snagging on the soft cotton.

***

I open my eyes and I am back in medical school, a first year student on the first day of anatomy class, huddled with my friends around our newly assigned cadaver. When we unzip the powder blue plastic body bag we see that we have been given a woman. Her face has been bound tightly with moist protective gauze. Distorted by the preservative fluids, she  
seems neither young nor old, thin nor fat. Her hair is pale and dry and clings tightly to her scalp. Her skin hangs in stiff, leathery folds with a reptilian sheen.

We have been asked to name our cadavers as a sign of respect and gratitude - and as an attempt to forestall the inevitable dehumanization of these former people, now teaching tools, already referred to by several crude students as slabs of cured meat. Jessica suggests "Maggie," and we all agree. It is only after a few minutes that it strikes me that my mother's name is Margaret and I would prefer a different moniker, but I am embarrassed, both because I don't wish to appear squeamish or superstitious in front of my colleagues and because it took me so long to make the connection, so I say nothing. In fact, to make a show of confidence, as much for my own benefit as anyone else's, I volunteer to make the first cut, snapping a fresh blade into my scalpel as easily as if I've been doing this half my life. My friends nod, wide-eyed. In my short time here, I've already made something of a reputation for myself  
as game for anything: Dana Scully, Stomach of Steel. I intend to keep it.

We are supposed to start with the back, in contrast to the procedure at most traditional medical schools. The four of us, all women, all below 5'5", groan with the effort of rolling Maggie over onto her chest. I take a deep breath, coughing a little at the rising phenol fumes, study the diagram in our plastic-coated handout one last time, then lower my scalpel to the middle of her back. The first sagittal cut is too shallow, the second too deep. Again. I expose the fatty superficial layers, peripherally aware that I am biting my lip in concentration. Enough. I return to the base of the neck, make perpendicular cuts out to her shoulders.

Here I pause to glance at my teammates, who are watching in rapt and barely disguised horror. We need to separate the upper layers from the goal of today's dissection, the superficial back muscles. None of the other women seem all that eager to jump in, so I take hold of one corner of skin with my gloved fingers and begin working it loose. As it slides along the plane of the deep fascia, the scalpel makes a delicate scraping sound, like a razor caressing the curve of a beloved's face. The steel-strong gossamer threads sigh and fall away, leaving the smooth pale flank of muscle bright beneath.

Before I know it, class is over. The professor comes around to remind us that we should all try to look at the face of our donor before we clean up and leave. Despite all that I've seen and done today, this idea scares me more than I'm willing to admit for reasons that I cannot articulate even to myself. Yet I nod reluctantly. My head is pounding. Vikki is the one who actually unwraps the gauze once we have turned Maggie over again. Slowly the sticky film pulls away and away, revealing a well-defined nose, high cheekbones, unwrinkled lips. I look away for a few seconds, peeling off my stained latex gloves. When I glance back, Melissa's face is staring up at me with accusing grey eyes.

An abrupt wave of nausea engulfs me and flings me across the room. Faces blur past. I am gripping the edges of a red biohazard bucket, the plastic cutting into my palms. My guts writhe and tear and force harsh bile up my throat again and again. Sweat is running down my face, my back, yet a bone-chill shudder works its way up my spine. Gradually I become aware of someone else: one of my classmates has come up from behind and is holding my shoulders. His touch is firm but gentle, comforting. Still choking and sobbing, I open my streaming eyes and turn around.

Mulder's concerned face hangs inches from my own, that sharp little line of worry etched between his eyebrows. I am in my own bathroom, kneeling on the cold tiled floor next to the toilet. My hair feels damp and tangled as it clings clammily to my neck. I gulp a few times, try to wipe my face with my pajama sleeve. Mulder wordlessly hands me a strip of toilet paper, then leaves my side to fetch a glass of water. I hear him fumbling around in the kitchen, turning on the tap. My head is whirling. I can still see Melissa's eyes. _It was only a dream._ I repeat this thought like a mantra, or a charm. It is no help. The truth from which I cannot wake is far more terrible. My sister clung grimly to life in that room for days while I played the fugitive in West Virginia only to slip away as I arrived, futile prayers on my lips and my gold cross searing the flesh of my palm. But even as this thought occurs it is weighed, found wanting, discarded with disgust. Melissa never clung grimly to anything; that would be me. Melissa left life as serenely as she sailed through it, bending gracefully beneath the few squalls she could not tack adroitly around.

Mulder is back with the water. He holds the glass to my lips, half-supporting me as if I were the invalid. I drink: cool, metallic, slightly sour. I lick my lips. "What are you doing here?" I croak.

Mulder's eyes are brown in this light, soft and infinitely gentle. "I didn't want to leave you alone tonight, Scully. You said that I could sleep on the couch, remember?" I can only stare at him. All of my memories center around an empty bed. "If you want me to leave, I will."

I hesitate. An empty bed surrounded by IV stands and heart monitors and oxygen feeds dissolves into the wrinkled corpse of a thirty-two year old woman face down on an anatomy table. I realize that I am still shaking, and clenching the empty glass so tightly that Mulder pries it away just before it would have imploded in my fist. He sets it safely on the back of the toilet and slips a finger under my chin. "No, please don't leave," I hear myself saying in a hoarse whisper.

Mulder nods slowly and slides his hand under my arm to rest on my back. It burns through the thin flannel, the single source of heat in the room. I draw on its warmth as I stand, feeling it as an umbilical cord, a lifeline connecting me to the waking world. Mulder is so solid, so strong, so alive. His very presence precludes the whisper of ghosts.

A few shuffling steps and we are in my bedroom. The clock reads 1:06 am. Mulder helps me into bed, pulling the thick down comforter away and then around me, then turns to go. The connection is broken. A low moan escapes my throat as he cruelly robs me of my only tenuous link to the living. He stops, looks back, his gaze unfathomable. His eyebrows  
raised in an unspoken question that hangs luminescent between us. Under any other circumstances, I would not ask, he would not offer, but dead grey eyes flash before me and I reach out blindly for the cuff of his shirt. "Stay with me." I watch the briefest twinge of panic slide across his face and then vanish as into the depths of a still pool. _Please. Just for tonight._ He does not move. I will not ask again. We both wait, holding our breaths, to see what he will do.

The moment of decision falters, wavers, limps on. Mulder unknots his tie and loosens his collar, then sinks heavily onto the edge of the bed and toes off his shoes. I drag myself over a few inches to make room for him as he slides under the icy sheets. The crackle of starch as he shifts around, adjusting his long body to my bed. I wait. He extends his right arm over the crumpled pillow and beckons me with his left. He will keep me safe. I lean gratefully into his warmth, tucking my chin between his neck and shoulder, reveling in the firm pulse of his blood through the carotid just under the skin. I imagine its steady, soothing murmur and it lulls me into a dreamless sleep.

***

When I open my eyes again, sunlight falls hot on my face. I am alone in my bed, sweltering under the weight of the comforter. There is a smooth curved imprint on the pillow beside me, faintly redolent of hair oil and masculine shampoo, but Mulder is gone.

 

***

Dedication: To Linda, my own long-suffering little sister, and to Bertha Remedios, who came with luck and left with love.


End file.
